Cops bust students' gang of bike thieves

Kolkata: Police arrested seven persons, including five juveniles, allegedly for stealing motorcycles here on Thursday. These youths were studying in schools and colleges and they confessed that learnt the techniques of stealing motorcycles on the YouTube.

Two accused persons have been produced before the Barasat Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court and were remanded to police custody for five days while, the five juveniles have been produced before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in Salt Lake and were sent to a home.

The youths confessed that they stole the motorcycles to meet their expenses. According to a source, since the past few months Baguiati police station received several complaints of bike thefts from the area.

While probing these cases, police officers interrogated several bike thieves. During one of the interrogations, a bike thief gave some lead to the police about a new gang operating in the area.

Based on the information provided by him, police officers identified a man and kept him under observation.

Police officers found a gang comprising students of schools and colleges were stealing motorcycles.

On Wednesday night, police raided their homes and arrested all seven of them. During interrogation, they said they learnt about bike stealing techniques on YouTube.

According to the

police, Aditya Gupta and Ajay Mallick, who are college students, were the prime accused in the case.

During interrogation, Gupta told the police that he had no idea about stealing motorcycles and he learnt on internet how to start a bike without ignition key and the trick to break the handle of bar lock without drawing attention.

Before stealing the motorcycles these youths made sure no one was looking at them and one of them sat on the bike as if he owned it and quickly broke the handle bar.

After that the wire to the ignition was cut off and joined to the battery to start the bike.

The parents and family members of these students said they had no idea that their children were involved in bike thefts.

The father of one of the accused persons said: "My son worked as a delivery boy at an organisation that delivered food to people. He returned home late and complained about work the pressure. We had no idea what he was

doing."

Police suspect that some persons more are involved with the gang. They are interrogating Gupta and Mallick in this regard. Cops still don't know where these students sold the stolen bikes. On Thursday, three stolen bikes were recovered by the cops.